Abstract
Nanowire structures have attracted attention in various fields, since new characteristics could be acquired in minute regions. Especially, Anodic Aluminum Oxide (AAO) is widely used in the fabrication of nanostructures, which has many nanosized pores and well-organized nano pattern. Using AAO as a template for replication, nanowires with a very high aspect ratio can be fabricated. Herein, we propose a facile method to fabricate a nano-micro hybrid structure using nanowires replicated from AAO, and surface treatment. A polymer resin was coated between Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and the AAO filter, roller pressed, and UV-cured. After the removal of aluminum by using NaOH solution, the nanowires aggregated to form a micropattern. The resulting structure was subjected to various surface treatments to investigate the surface behavior and wettability. As opposed to reported data, UV-ozone treatment can enhance surface hydrophobicity because the UV energy affects the nanowire surface, thus altering the shape of the aggregated nanowires. The hydrophobicity of the surface could be further improved by octadecyltrichlorosilane (OTS) coating immediately after UV-ozone treatment. We thus demonstrated that the nano-micro hybrid structure could be formed in the middle of nanowire replication, and then, the shape and surface characteristics could be controlled by surface treatment.
Highlights
Nanoscale structures such as nanoparticles, nanowires, nanopillars, and nanotubes have attracted attention because of their hidden characteristics in minute regions in various fields such as electricity, electronics, bio surfaces, and optics [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]
Anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) is widely used as a template for nanoscale structures since it has a large number of nanosized pores and micro-size height, which enable the fabrication of nanowires and nanotubes with a high aspect ratio [27,28,29,30]
Nanowires were fabricated by replication using a porous template referred to as AAO filter (Whatman, anodisc 25, average diameter of 200 nm, thickness of 60 μm, Figure 2b)
Summary
Nanoscale structures such as nanoparticles, nanowires, nanopillars, and nanotubes have attracted attention because of their hidden characteristics in minute regions in various fields such as electricity, electronics, bio surfaces, and optics [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]. Anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) is widely used as a template for nanoscale structures since it has a large number of nanosized pores and micro-size height, which enable the fabrication of nanowires and nanotubes with a high aspect ratio [27,28,29,30]. At such a high aspect ratio, the nanowires are entangled due to the surface tension between them [31,32,33]. We attempted to fabricate nano-micro hybrid structures from tangled high-aspect-ratio nanowires by exploiting the aggregation phenomenon in a positive manner. The shape of the nano-micro hybrid structure was determined by SEM images, and the surface characteristics were investigated by contact angle measurements [36,37]
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